A Whole Child Ago
by netgirly2k
Summary: Doctor, you were not grown in a vat by aliens


They've got to stop meeting like this.

---

Sarah angled the sonic lipstick at the lock of the secondary school fire door. She groaned with frustration when nothing happened and turned up the setting on the lipstick. The lock clicked and the door swung open revealing the Doctor, holding the sonic screwdriver.

They stared mutely for a moment, mirror images of each other. Surprised looks on their faces, sonic devices in hand. Then the Doctor broke out a wide grin.

"Hello!"

"What are you doing here?" Sarah asked.

"Alien invasion, you?"

"Parents evening."

"Sorry?"

Sarah tried to work out if there was a short version of the saga which began with Bubbleshock and ended with Sarah being accused of being the world's worst mother by Luke's awful maths teacher.

Luckily she was rescued by the sound of a scream coming from another part of the building.

"Martha!" The Doctor shouted, Sarah made to follow him but was stopped short by the sound a different scream coming from another part of the building.

"Maria!" she exclaimed.

"Good luck," the Doctor flashed his most brilliant grin before dashing off in the direction of the first scream.

---

Forty-five minutes later and Sarah had successfully extracted Maria and Luke from the clutches of a slime monster which had been growing in the science department, finished being admonished by Luke's teachers and was pulling the Figaro into the drive at home.

It was the first moment she'd had to think about her brief encounter with the Doctor. He'd looked well, fantastic really, exactly as he'd looked when she'd seen him last. Which at least meant he hadn't been doing anything silly that would cause him to regenerate, and it looked like he was still dashing around like mad averting alien invasions and saving damsels in distress and Sarah was okay with that. She was really mostly okay with that.

She slammed the car door shut and handed Luke the sonic lipstick to open the door with. She reminded herself to have some keys cut, having a front door that could only be opened by an alien lock-picking device might be secure but it wasn't exactly practical. Luke was already through the front door when the blue smudge caught Sarah's eye. The TARDIS was tucked into a corner of her garden, nearly hidden by overgrowing greenery. She looked at it long and hard, then turned and headed into the house.

She followed the sound of conversation towards the kitchen, passing a brown overcoat thrown haphazardly over the banister. And there was the Doctor, sitting at the kitchen table with what looked like the entire contents of Sarah's cupboards spread out before him chatting quite happily with Luke. She supposed that she should have a word with Luke about talking to strange men who randomly appeared in the kitchen, it was one of those parental chats she kept forgetting about.

"Sarah, hello!" he beamed at her. "I was wondering when you'd get back, I've made myself at home, don't mind, do you?"

"Luke, bedtime," Luke obediently stood up and with a smile at the Doctor and left the kitchen. That was the good thing about Luke, he didn't argue when you suddenly told him he had a bedtime when he'd never had one before.

"Cup of tea?" The Doctor asked. Sarah nodded.

"Marvellous, milk and two sugars in mine," the Doctor grinned cheekily.

Sarah took off her coat and threw it at the Doctor's head. He took this subtle hint as his cue to hop up and set about making a pot of tea.

"You said that you didn't have any kids," the Doctor's back was to her and his voice was overly casual.

"He's new."

"He's about fourteen," that same too casual voice as he handed her a mug of tea.

"There were these aliens trying to take over London by fizzy drink..." Sarah began; telling the true story for once and not the false version Mr Smith had cooked up for the benefit of teachers and social workers.

"...And tonight I had this awful teacher suggest that I send him to an educational psychologist, said that he wasn't properly developed for his age group. And I couldn't very well say that as a matter of fact I think he's doing great considering that he was grown in a vat by aliens."

"I was grown in a vat by aliens, never did me any harm."

"Doctor, you were not grown in vat by aliens."

"Know that for a fact, do you?" the Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow at her over his cup of tea.

Sarah decided that a well timed change of topic was called for, "now that you've heard all about my evening, how did your alien invasion go?"

"Fine, brilliant actually. Well, no, not brilliant, but they're not going to invade, so that's something."

"And the woman who was with you, Martha was it?"

"Now, Sarah Jane, she is brilliant. I'd have brought her round to say hello but she's got an exam in the morning and I thought I'd better let her get a good nights sleep. I'm told that's important for exams, was never any good at them myself. But Martha thinks they're important, demanded to be brought home so she could pass them."

"You're bringing your companions home to sit exams, that's new."

"Oi, I took you back to Earth every time you asked," the Doctor said in a tone that revealed the true extent of his delusions about his ability to pilot the TARDIS.

"Yes, when you could find it."

"The universe is a humungous place, Sarah, from some of the places I took you finding the Earth would be like finding Beddgelert on a map."

"Where's Beddgelert?"

"Well, exactly."

The Doctor drained the last of his tea, bit the top layer off a jammie dodger and picked up the sonic lipstick, examining it from end to end.

"Impressive, where did you get it again?"

"It was a gift," Sarah answered, mostly honestly.

"It wasn't from a sinister politician who's out to take over the planet, was it?" he looked at her keenly.

"No," Sarah replied, bemused. The Doctor was flicking through the lipsticks settings and squinting into the pale blue light.

"You might want to be careful, one of those settings-"

"Ow!" The Doctor yelped and tumbled backwards out of his chair.

"Doctor, are you all right?"

"Ow, ow, ow, ow..." he bounced to his feet and hopped from one foot to the other with one hand clamped over his left eye.

"Let me have a look," Sarah took his hand away from his eye and peered up at him, he looked fine, his eye wasn't even bloodshot. "Can you see?"

He closed one eye and then the other in rabid succession, winking frantically. "Looks like," he grinned manically at his own pun.

Sarah swatted him on the arm, "it's all fun and games until somebody looses an eye. Okay, Doctor, why are you looking at me so strangely?"

"You're a mum," he sounded delighted, "that's such a mum thing to say."

Sarah pulled away from him and sat down at the table, pointedly not clearing away the accumulated detritus.

"So other than commenting on my parenting skills and eating all the jammie dodgers, why are you really here?"

The Doctor looked away from her, knowing he was rumbled. "Remember that alien invasion I was telling you about?"

"Yes," Sarah sighed, certain that this was going nowhere good.

"I might, maybe, have not been telling the whole truth."

"I'm shocked, Doctor. Really."

He ignored her sarcasm. "Well, this not invading that they're not going to do," Sarah had barely begun to puzzle out the grammar of that sentence when the Doctor continued. "It's on the condition that I find a member of their crew who crash landed somewhere near London and return him. Trouble is, this alien doesn't really seem to want to be found. Can't say as I blame him, sacred and alone on a strange new world full of inexplicable human beings. Poor thing."

"And you've come to me because..."

"According to the rumours that I've been hearing, not always on Earth mind you, you're the go to human for aliens who find themselves trapped here."

"Am I?" Sarah said, surprised and flattered. Although she wasn't sure if she was flattered because she was remembered by the life forms she had helped or because the Doctor was listening out for news of her.

"You are," the Doctor confirmed, "especially when the aliens in question don't want to be shot or locked up indefinitely."

"Right then," Sarah drained the rest of her tea and stood. "We'd better get started."

---

The Doctor wandered aimlessly around Sarah's attic, picking items up and saying things like "that's not too shabby," and "even I don't have one of these."

Every time he slipped something into his pocket Sarah glared at him until he looked contrite and put it back.

"Right," she began, interrupting his contemplation of a piece of exotic looking rock that had been a souvenir from Jo's last holiday. "Let's get started."

The Doctor walked over to where Sarah was standing next to Mr Smith.

"I'm not going to make any comment about you calling your computer Mr Smith," he said with a smirk.

"I remember what you used to call the TARDIS, Doctor."

"Yes, that's why I'm choosing to make no comment about the computer."

Sarah ignored him and picked up her cordless telephone. A few phone calls and some poking about in the Torchwood mainframe later they had the location of their alien.

Sarah stood and stretched, "I'd suppose we'd better-"

"Sarah, look," the Doctor interrupted her with a nod towards the attic door, Luke was hovering in the shadows just outside.

"How long have you been standing there?" Sarah asked, half annoyed, half impressed.

"Since you came up here," Luke answered. "I know you and your friend were trying to track down a lost alien and that you've found that it's hiding in some cells near Canary Wharf."

Sarah sighed; sometimes she wished that Luke would lie like a normal teenager.

"If you're going to go and talk to it, can I come?"

"Course you can," agreed the Doctor.

"No," said Sarah in her best impression of a firm parental voice. Two sets of nearly identical puppy dog eyes looked at her. "No, that's where Torchwood one used to be, there could be anything down there."

"Sorry," the Doctor addressed Luke, "after all this is done I'll get in the TARDIS and pop back when you're older. C'mon, Sarah Jane."

"Um," Sarah looked pointedly at Luke.

"Oh," the Doctor said, "Oh. Yes, you should stay here."

"I've got to come up with a way to kill off what's left of that thing the sixth formers were growing at the school anyway."

"Right, well, okay. Thanks for the help, and the jammie dodgers, goodbye." And with that the Doctor strode out of the attic and down the stairs,

"Luke, go to bed," Sarah ordered and dashed down the stairs after the Doctor. She caught up with him just as he was stepping through the front door.

"Is everything okay?" he asked when she caught his elbow to stop him from leaving.

"Did you mean what you said about coming back for Luke?"

"Yeah, course."

"Good, because he believed you and I don't want him waiting forever if you're not coming back."

"Sarah," the Doctor paused, sighed, "I'm coming back. Give him a couple of years to get a bit taller and I bet he'll make a fantastic travelling companion. Just like his mum."

"He's adopted."

The Doctor grinned, "doesn't matter."


End file.
